The piece that I wrote before this one, which is on the blogsite after this one (apparently since our brains are now hardwired to scroll down and not up, ever shall it be so) has got me to thinking about names and a “trend” I have noticed in recent days, weeks, months.
And since every thing has to have a name these days (even things about names), I’m calling it “the married women three-name thing.”
Yes, I know it lacks panache, but it explains the concept clearly and concisely, which, I realize, pretty much shreds any hope I ever had, or might yet have, of writing government manuals.
Lately, as I peruse Facebook, Twitter, My Space, LinkedIn and all the other social networking sites I am hip enough to know I need to be hip enough to know (and always, and only, during working hours. See, I told you I was hip…)it has come to my attention that more and more married women are known as and/or are calling themselves by three names.
No, not Moe, Larry and Curly.
Sheesh. Everybody’s a comedian.
The married women three-name thing is defined as a woman, married, who uses her first name, maiden surname (that one will get me some cards and letters, ya you betcha) and married surname.
So, if, for example, the trend had found its way to the culture sixty years ago, we would have laughed each week at the zany adventures of Lucy McGillicuddy Ricardo.
Rob and Richie would have been the loving husband and son, respectively of Laura Meeker Petrie.
Archie and Edith would be the proud parents of Gloria Bunker Stivic.
The easiest and most obvious theory of where this is coming from is simply women deciding that they’re no longer willing to give up their individual identities simply because they choose to take them marital vows.
First of all, and excuse me for living, but isn’t giving up your individual identity a natural and inevitable by-product of taking said vows?
I mean, come on, men weren’t born to choose cleaning out the gutters over playing eighteen holes.
And let’s not even get started on the conflict men experience between their primal urge to wander freely in a shopping mall and having to stop and nod approvingly at every damn pair of shoes in every damn shoe store in the free world.
Uh, yeah, honey, those pumps would go great with your ocean blue dress…so cute.
The phenomenon, if you will, of the married women three-name thing doesn’t seem to have any pattern I can discern, at this point. Of the various and sundry women that I know, not counting ex-wives because all of those women dropped that third name faster than Michael Vick being booed at a dog show, the use of three names seems to cut across a wide socio-economic-age demographic. Older, younger, richer, poorer, the only thing they have in common is that they are married.
This doesn’t apply, by the way, to women who already had three names to begin with.
Like Mary Chapin Carpenter.
Mary Tyler Moore.
Anna Nicole Smith.
Cause it gets really confusing when you go there.
Chapin’s married name, for example, is Smith.
So her name is Mary Chapin Carpenter Smith.
And that conjures up that “John Jacob Jingleheimer” thing that will be stuck in your head for weeks.
Maybe it’s the romantic in me, but I like to think that “the married women three-name thing” isn’t about keeping one foot outside the door of happy ever after, just in case.
I prefer to believe that those women just have an eye and ear for cool names.
And three names can be very cool.
At least when it comes to women.
Men don’t seem to fare as well with the concept.
John Wayne Gacy.
Mark David Chapman.
Sirhan Bishara Sirhan.
I once had a radio station owner tell me that I couldn’t use my real three name name on the air because it conjured up “thoughts of serial killers” like the aforementioned.
I responded that I totally understood.
And was down with the idea that three named men were most assuredly dubious characters.
Like John Wilkes Booth.
And Lee Harvey Oswald.
And John Paul Jones.
And Martin Luther King.
That gig didn’t last long.
Go figure.
I’d offer proof of my “women with three names is cool” theory by sharing some of my friends’ names with you but I respect their privacy, value their friendship and really don’t need any more cease and desist orders clogging up my teeny apartment complex mail box.
Then again, they are plastered all over my Facebook page.
So check it out.
Just don’t tell anybody I told you where to look.
Cause if they got pissed at me, I’d end up being known by one name instead of my own three.
Mudd.
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